The project MIREU aims to establish a network of mining and metallurgy regions across Europe with a view to ensure the sustained and sustainable supply of mineral raw materials to the EU. The network will help the regions to share knowledge and experiences when facing the challenge to establish and maintain an extractive industry. MIREU will facilitate an exchange between all interested stakeholders in the regions, namely regulatory authorities, political and administrative bodies, development agencies, mining companies, non-government organisations, as well as the general public. The project will develop a shared knowledge base, taking into account the region-specific geographic and economic features, cultural, societal and language diversity, and their historical developments. The network will also learn from experience in other regions of the World. This knowledge base will allow to understand what has been conducive and what hampering to the development of extractive and metallurgical industries. It will also provide the context for a bottom-up integration of these activities into their respective socio-economic and socio-cultural context. Development is about people and, therefore, bringing people into the decision-finding procedure in order to achieve a ‘social license to operate’ will be a key aspect of the project. Guidelines and recommendations for actions to be taken to foster a sustained and sustainable development of the extractive industries will be developed in close co-operation with a range of selected regions from the European Union. These regions will form a nucleus and multipliers for a more extensive network beyond the life-time of the project.

EPRISE project aims to promote and support Photonics as a KET with focus on Life Science applications in 4 target markets where Europe holds a leading position – Medical Technologies, Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture and Food. Companies developing photonics-based products for these markets face highly specific Go-to-Market challenges such as long time to market adoption, complex regulatory frameworks and high barriers to market entry to name but a few. They are often in need of support from public funding to help them cross the “Valley of death” between innovation ready phase (TRL 4), and investment ready phase (TRL 7). During this time, they are also in need of advice from market specific experts who can guide them on non-technological (business) topics. EPRISE consortium will organise a “European Photonics Roadshow”, a series of 7 major events hosted by European regions, with the aim of providing SMEs with concrete solutions from market experts on how to overcome market barriers and boosting collaboration along the complete value chain via pre-arranged B2B meetings. Photonics clusters involved in EPRISE have both local connections and technology understanding to set-up, together with Regional Authorities, an efficient framework that will encourage creation of funding synergies between regional and European funds in order to better exploit potential of European Photonics industry. The project aims to provide regional policy makers with an overview of funding synergies to be considered in the current or following Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). Furthermore, the project aims to establish a formal collaboration with the ongoing European Photonics projects offering technology support (ActPhast, Pix4Life) that can address potential technology issues linked to SMEs access to market.